Thirteen Hours

Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. ... Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare. Jeremiah 29:5,7

Just outside the classroom windows, past the handprint of some warm student desperate for fresh air, the sunset is glorious at five minutes to five. A glow hides behind the ridge that separates the Bitter Lake neighborhood from the sea, and I can imagine away all the barriers, hundreds of miles of them, between us and the Pacific Ocean, where doubtless a grand show is going on.

The sight is so spectacular that I rifle through my purse for a moment and fish out a camera, determined to capture the moment. It is only when I have the scene framed in a digtal screen that I realize an artistic dilemma. At the top is the sky, shot through with color and clouds that slant toward the brightest point, a grammar-school version of a sunset that I've only seen in Crayola. Beneath the child's sky are a few scrawny trees left after the Bitter Lake apartment complexes. Among the trees shine the streetlights and the neon signs of the Upper Aurora business district; Outback Steakhouse and Abbey Party Rentals peirce the trees' even silhouettes. In the foreground of the screen stands the rest of my school, the Auto Shop and the covered walkways, enveloped for a construction project in chain-link fence and grey-painted plywood. I zoom in and out, cutting off the rough edges and then embracing them again, battling with myself over whether or not to put my school in the picture. I take two pictures, resolving to decide later what to do with them.




I'll have plenty of time to think. Today is a thirteen-hour Tuesday, but the hours are not filled in a way to make them move quickly. The first six are the regular pace, as I hop from page to page of A Raisin in the Sun, discussing race and relationships with ninth graders. I even give up my role as "narrator" today (drab reader of stage directions) to four students, who embue the role with tonal commentaries all their own. I revel in the sound of teenagers of all backgrounds pronouncing the specific and dailectic drama of Lorraine Hansberry; in their multicultural voices, a play about prejudice, family, and ethnic identity becomes the most relevant work we've encountered yet. They love it, and I love it with them. The regular school day, though occasionally challenging, is teaching at its most enjoyable.

The next seven hours are uneven and mysterious. I copy edit the student newspaper, discussing dangling participles and whether or not the "party" of the Democratic Party should be capitalized. I sort the contents the rolling journalism cart (a metal shelving unit with wheels, where I tend to stack old newspapers at random), and some students and I spend several minutes poring over pasted-up issues from the 1980s. We decide that we're grateful for computers. I discuss responsible student journalism with a ruffled editor-in-chief who is smarting over this article in the Seattle Times. I reread the completed parts of the paper, this time nervously scanning the page for the slanderous remarks that have put this other school in such deep touble. Later, when most of the students leave, I remain with a few layout editors, offering lollipops like a Kindergarten teacher, which pleases these hardworking seniors to a remarkable degree.

After a while even they go home, leaving me with two more hours to spend in an empty classroom, waiting for the evening meeting at the end of this long day. I sweep the floor. Go to McDonalds near the mall for some Dollar Menu supper. Watch a movie for class tomorrow while eating a chicken sandwich and fries. It is all very quiet, very plain. At six thirty, I make a cup of tea and go down to the cafeteria, where the meeting is taking place.

This is no ordinary meeting. It is, instead, a public hearing regarding a building project that our school district began two years ago. The proposed project is to add a new twelve-classroom wing, replacing rickety portable structures at the cost of part of a forest adjacent to the school. The project has been contested since its inception, and tonight is the culmination of the conflict, a place where a magic podium gives voice to all.

As I enter the cafeteria, which is beginning to fill with an odd mixture of irate neighbors and sign-bearing teenagers, I realize that this day has not been glamorous, by any stretch. This meeting seems in many ways the height of all things mundane. There will be no "Sex and the City" episode of this day. No one but me would care to write about it. I could write about the beauty of democracy, I suppose, but in truth democracy consists most purely in places and forums like this, in cafeterias that still smell like lunch, with people who aren't out doing the things that make it into sitcoms. There is nothing here that I could paint in a picture, nothing I could even write a poem about. Public hearings are prose-only situations.

I have to go back to the classroom for extra copies of the student newspaper, which features an article titled "TIMBER?!" on the cover. When I come back, I find that the once-empty seats around me have filled with students. Only a few speakers into the meeting, I realize the benefit of sitting on the "kid side" of the room. Each opinion is met with passion from the young adults around me. With great pride and admiration, I watch my students--many of them seniors who will never see the proposed improvements--take the podium. They are articulate and well-informed, and back in the seats they respond even to those with whom they disagree with efforts at understanding. I, wraith of a teacher exhausted in the thirteenth hour, am suddenly content.

I am struck by the importance of truth, even more than beauty. This is not a spectacular moment by many standards, not one that I would have chosen. This meeting springs out of controversy that costs our school district and our students both time and money. And yet, sitting in a cafeteria surrounded by young people learning to participate in their community, I don't want to miss a second.

When I come home, I find the whole photograph. Sunset, trees, lights, and building project.